A team of researchers from the University of Granada, led by José Gómez Zotano and José Antonio Olmedo Cobo, has carried out the first palaeogeographic reconstruction of the forest fires that have affected the pinsapares and other forests of Sierra Bermeja, in Andalusia. This is a pioneering study which, based on the taxonomic analysis and radiocarbon dating of the coals present in the natural soils of the Bermeja massif, has identified the occurrence of up to 28 fire events at different times during the Holocene, disturbances which negatively affected one of the few fir trees on the planet that grow on peridotites.
The recurrence of fire could have caused this singular conifer to disappear from certain sectors of Sierra Bermeja where it is not present today, as is the case of Sierra Palmitera. These data also support the idea that the Spanish fir had a wider distribution in the past in the south of the Iberian Peninsula.
This palaeoecological approach has also been complemented with the mapping of recent forest fires, the results of which show that the reduction of the distribution area of the Bermejo firs (also of other forests such as resin pine forests) as a consequence of fire has been particularly intense during the last decades, with almost 4500 Spanish firs affected.
The results, which have been published in the prestigious international journal Fire Ecology, report on the important role played by fire in the dynamics of the serpentine forests of Sierra Bermeja throughout much of the Holocene. It is also concluded that this phenomenon has intensified in recent decades, affecting unique stands of Spanish fir forest, to the point that some of its forests have been recorded to have disappeared for this reason in recent years. As a result, the researchers indicate the need to include the whole of Sierra Bermeja in the National Park Network in order to contribute to the effective protection of the most important serpentine ecosystem in Spain. This research has been developed in the framework of the projects PALEOPINSAPO II (PID2022-141592NB-I00) and PALEONIEVES (Ref. 3025/2023).